The James Bond Shower: A Shot of Cold Water for Health and Vitality
Being an impressionable kid, I started doing it too. I didn’t know the proper name for this type of shower, so I just called it the “James Bond Shower.” Taking a shower that started hot and ended cold proved to be quite invigorating. It woke me up and added a bit of pep to my step throughout the day. I’ve continued the practice of the James Bond Shower into adulthood. Along the way, I’ve discovered that cold water baths have been used for centuries as a way to treat various ailments and that modern studies lend credence to the health claims associated with this age old treatment.
Below we give a brief rundown on the benefits of the James Bond Shower.
A Brief History of Cold Water Therapy
“Nothing
like sitting in an ice cold bath with nothing but my bare bum in it
while reading the latest Dickens novel to invigorate and enliven the
senses. Tally ho!”The Spartans, hard-asses that they were, felt hot water was for the weak and unmanly. When they did take baths (which was, like, once a year) they used only cold water because they thought it tempered the body and made it vigorous for ass kicking.
During the first century, Finnish folks would sweat it out in saunas and then jump into an ice cold lake or stream, a pastime which is referred to as “avantouinti” or “ice hole swimming” and is still enjoyed by modern Finns and others wild and woolly Scandinavians.
Those Finns are so crazy! Or are they?In the 1820s, a German farmer named Vincenz Priessnitz started touting a new medical treatment called “hydrotherapy,” which used cold water to cure everything from broken bones to erectile dysfunction. He turned his family’s homestead into a sanitarium, and patients flocked to it in the hope that his cold water cure could help them. Among his clientele were dukes, duchesses, counts, countesses, and a few princesses to boot.
Priessnitz’s hydrotherapy soon spread to the rest of Europe and eventually to the United States. Celebrities and other famous folks took to it, like, well, a duck to water and helped popularize the cold water cure with the masses. For example, Charles Darwin (a chronically sick guy and owner of an awesomely manly beard) was a huge proponent of hydrotherapy. The first hydrotherapy facility opened up in the U.S in 1843, right when the sanitarium craze hit America. By the the end of the 19th century, over 200 hydrotherapy/sanitarium resorts existed in the U.S., the most famous being the Battle Creek Sanitarium founded by John Harvey Kellogg. You know. The guy who invented corn flakes. And believed in the awesome power of enemas and a “squeaky clean colon.”
The popularity of hydrotherapy began to decline in the 20th century as many in the medical field moved to drugs to treat illnesses. As doctors concentrated on conventional medicine, more holistic methods began to be seen as quackery. While hydrotherapy was prescribed less and less to cure illnesses, doctors continued to use it to treat injuries such as strained muscles and broken bones. You’ll find athletes today taking ice baths to speed their recovery from injuries and intense workouts.
Benefits of Cold Water Showers
While doctors may no longer instruct their patients to take a cold bath and call them in the morning, a shot of cold water can still impart real health benefits:Improves circulation. Good blood circulation is vital for overall cardiovascular health. Healthy blood circulation also speeds up recovery time from strenuous exercises and work. Alternating between hot and cold water while you shower is an easy way to improve your circulation. Cold water causes your blood to move to your organs to keep them warm. Warm water reverses the effect by causing the blood to move towards the surface of the skin. Cold shower proponents argue that stimulating the circulatory system in this way keeps them healthier and younger looking than their hot water-loving counterparts.
Relieves depression. Lots of great men from history suffered bouts of depression. Henry David Thoreau is one such man. But perhaps Thoreau’s baths in chilly Walden Pond helped keep his black dog at bay. Research at the Department of Radiation Oncology at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine indicates that short cold showers may stimulate the brain’s “blue spot”- the brain’s primary source of noradrenaline — a chemical that could help mitigate depression. I guess a bout of the blues isn’t so bad after all.
Keeps skin and hair healthy. Hot water dries out skin and hair. If you want to avoid an irritating itch and ashy elbows, turn down the temperature of your showers. Also, cold water can make your manly mane look shinier and your skin look healthier by closing up your cuticles and pores.
Strengthens immunity. According to a study done in 1993 by the Thrombosis Research Institute in England, individuals who took daily cold showers saw an increase in the number of virus fighting white blood cells compared to individuals who took hot showers. Researchers believe that the increased metabolic rate, which results from the body’s attempt to warm itself up, activates the immune system and releases more white blood cells in response.
Increases testosterone. During the 19th century, many doctors and ministers recommended that young men take baths in cold water to reduce the sin of “self-pollution,” i.e. whacking off. Cold water was thought to extinguish a man’s flaming carnal desires. There was even a ghastly device invented on this principle.
How wrong they were! The same study by the Thrombosis Research Institute cited above showed that cold water showers actually increase testosterone production in men. Increased testosterone levels not only boost a man’s libido, but also his overall strength and energy level. If you’re looking to increase your testosterone, instead of juicing up like Mark McGwire, hop into a cold shower.
Increases fertility. Trying to become a dad? Cold showers are good for your little swimmers. Your testes aren’t meant to get too hot; that’s why they hang outside your body. Sperm counts decrease when the temperature of a man’s testes increases. Experiments done in the 1950s showed that hot baths were an effective contraceptive. Men who took a 30 minute hot bath every other day for 3 weeks were infertile for the next six months. More recently, the University of California at San Francisco did a study with men who were exposed to 30 minutes of “wet heat” (hot baths and such) a week. When the men cut this exposure out, their sperm count went up by 491%, and their sperm’s motility improved as well. While switching from a hot to cold shower may not have as dramatic an effect, if you’re trying to create some progeny, it surely won’t hurt.
Increases energy and well-being. Every time I end a shower with cold water, I leave feeling invigorated and energized. Your heart starts pumping, and the rush of blood through your body helps shake off the lethargy of the previous night’s sleep. For me, the spike in energy lasts several hours. It’s almost like drinking a can of Diet Mountain Dew, minus the aspartame. And while it hasn’t been studied, many people swear that cold showers are a surefire stress reducer. I’m a believer.
Getting Started with Cold Water Showers
If you’ve spent most of your life taking hot showers, suddenly turning the dial in the other direction can be a big shock to the system. I took a break from the James Bond Showers for a few months. When I decided to get started again with them, my heart almost jumped out of my chest, and I nearly passed out from hyperventilating when the cold water hit my body. Too much, too soon.My suggestion (based on personal experience) is to gradually decrease the temp of the water so your body can adjust.
Which reminds me, some people with certain conditions should avoid cold showers because of the shock to the body’s system. If you have the following conditions, you’ll have to harness your inner 007 another way:
- Heart disease. If my normal, healthy heart felt like it was about to explode, imagine how a diseased heart will feel.
- High blood pressure. The contraction in your blood vessels caused by cold water could cause a stroke. Apparently.
- Overheated or feverish. Your blood vessels need to dilate in order to release heat. Cold water causes them to constrict.
1. Start off with the hot water.
2. Wash your hair with some Pinaud Elixir shampoo, just like 007.
3. When you’re ready to rinse, just turn it down to cold. Bond would spend a few minutes under the cold water, meditating about a lost love or on how awesome his job is.
4. As you walk out the shower, kill the hitman that’s been hiding in the closet using nothing but a towel and a Scotch tumbler.
5. Say a pithy one liner; proceed to put on tux.
You’ll start seeing the benefits right after the first shower, and it only gets better as you continue. While cold water showers won’t give you the charm or skills of 007, you’ll feel like a new man.
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btw thanks for creating such a great website. I just started visiting it and it’s incredible. kudos my friend.
“Cold water causes your blood to move to your organs to keep them warm.”
No. Cold water acts as a cutaneous vasoconstrictor, causing the skin to get less blood flow. This doesn’t translate into blood “moving to your organs”. Blood follows the same vessels either way. The difference is really that your blood pressure will be higher after exposure to cold water, an effect which is generally considered unhealthy.
“Cold shower proponents argue that stimulating the circulatory system in this way keeps them healthier and younger looking than their hot water-loving counterparts.”
Nonsense. There is no such thing as “stimulating the circulatory system” just as there is no such thing as “boosting the immune system”. What you’re actually doing is stressing your body by lowering your core temperature, forcing the body to expend calories to maintain thermal homeostasis. By the way, if your core temperature drops below around 95 F, you’re hypothermic, and that’s a medical emergency. The first sign is usually uncontrollable shivering, followed by tachycardia — rapid heartbeat — and an immediate urge to urinate. Such conditions are also absolutely terrible for the liver, and doing it regularly might eventually trigger type 2 diabetes.
“Research at the Department of Radiation Oncology at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine indicates that short cold showers may stimulate the brain’s “blue spot”- the brain’s primary source of noradrenaline — a chemical that could help mitigate depression.”
Nikolai Shevchuk is basically a charlatan. The study you cite was done by him, and it flies in the face of basic science. While the locus caeruleus is being studied in relation to such things as depression and panic disorder, there’s absolutely no physiologic reason to believe cold water on the skin has any particular effect upon it, or that it ever could.
“Hot water dries out skin and hair. If you want to avoid an irritating itch and ashy elbows, turn down the temperature of your showers.”
This is an argument for warm showers as opposed to hot. Not an argument for cold showers at all.
“Also, cold water can make your manly mane look shinier and your skin look healthier by closing up your cuticles and pores.”
This is merely cosmetic. To “look healthier” is culture-bound, and not necessarily the same thing as actually being healthier. There is no particular health benefit associated with “closing up your cuticles and pores”. Cuticles don’t open or close, and pores don’t open or close so much that it has any great effect on one’s dermatology either way. One can still get blackheads with “closed pores”, and one will still sweat the same amount. What other possible benefit could this produce?
It also seems that I need to remind the group that neither hair nor the outermost layer of skin are actually alive. Hair was never alive. It’s a proteinaceous waste product of the body, conceptually similar to feces, though thankfully not chemically similar. And, all humans are covered with a good bit of dead skin, which protects the more sensitive living skin underneath. The human epidermis is divided into five layers, the first two of which are dead (the strata cornerum & lucidum). The next layer, the stratum granulosum, is in the process of dying. This is perfectly normal.
“According to a study done in 1993 by the Thrombosis Research Institute in England, individuals who took daily cold showers saw an increase in the number of virus fighting white blood cells compared to individuals who took hot showers. Researchers believe that the increased metabolic rate, which results from the body’s attempt to warm itself up, activates the immune system and releases more white blood cells in response.”
Absolute nonsense. There is no such thing as “activating the immune system”. It is always on if you have a working one. Some people don’t. Even if the study you mention actually supports such a conclusion and was rigorously done (which I can’t determine because you don’t provide enough information to identify it), this is a mere correlation. To jump from a correlation to a particular causal relationship is fallacious without more substantial evidence.
“The same study by the Thrombosis Research Institute cited above showed that cold water showers actually increase testosterone production in men.”
Still being unable to identify the study, I can’t rebut in detail. Nevertheless, the mere fact that the same study sought to test both immune response and testosterone levels of men after different types of showers suggests to me that there’s some pathological science going on here, and a detailed examination of the methods would expose flaws in the experiment. I’d bet money on it.
“Trying to become a dad? Cold showers are good for your little swimmers. Your testes aren’t meant to get too hot; that’s why they hang outside your body. Sperm counts decrease when the temperature of a man’s testes increases. Experiments done in the 1950s showed that hot baths were an effective contraceptive. Men who took a 30 minute hot bath every other day for 3 weeks were infertile for the next six months.”
Okay, this is just stupid. You’re relying on the vague usage of the word “hot” to imply that the hot showers an average person takes could do this, which is flatly false. One would have to take a literally scalding hot shower — burning the skin — to have any chance of inducing invirility (funfact: the word “fertility” only applies to females, the male equivalent is “virility”). A standard hot shower at around 100 F is not going to reduce sperm count, particularly if you don’t spend several hours per day in such water. A shower at 130 F might, but then you’re going to be covered in first degree burns as well. Your hot water tank shouldn’t be set to exceed 120 F to begin with.
Also, there’s a fallacy involved in the idea that, because a scalding hot shower causes invirility, therefore a cold shower causes excessive virility. It’s non sequitur. It doesn’t follow logically. It could also be the case, for all YOU know, that both extremes of heat and cold cause invirility. You didn’t bother checking, did you? Looking only for confirming evidence and remaining intentionally ignorant of disconfirming evidence is how things like homeopathy and chiropractic neck manipulation get invented.
“While switching from a hot to cold shower may not have as dramatic an effect, if you’re trying to create some progeny, it surely won’t hurt.”
Neither will not bathing at all, on that front. So what? Pointless aside masquerading as an argument. “Do it because it won’t hurt” isn’t very persuasive. For the most part, licking a dog’s ass won’t hurt you: they’re usually cleaner than human hands. Nevertheless, I’m not going to be doing that any time soon.
“Every time I end a shower with cold water, I leave feeling invigorated and energized. Your heart starts pumping, and the rush of blood through your body helps shake off the lethargy of the previous night’s sleep. For me, the spike in energy lasts several hours. It’s almost like drinking a can of Diet Mountain Dew, minus the aspartame. And while it hasn’t been studied, many people swear that cold showers are a surefire stress reducer. I’m a believer.”
Perhaps that’s the basic problem here. You’re a “believer” rather than an “investigator”. This is apparently akin to a religious conviction for you, and so you’re more interested in a presentation which persuades by dint of rhetorical misdirection than by dint of real evidence.
As I already mentioned, your heart “starts pumping” due to borderline hypothermia, which induces tachycardia, which is absolutely NOT a good thing to repeatedly induce. Likewise, far from reducing stress, it causes it. Vasoconstriction -> hypertension -> stress. Regular bouts of hypertension also cause damage to internal organs, particularly the kidneys.
So the only real incontestable point you’ve made for the entire article is that a cold shower produces, for you at least, a subjective feeling of vigor. Not exactly impressive or convincing.
Traditional Korean bathhouses, called jjimjjilbang, are so popular as to be almost ubiquitous. Every town will have at least one local jjimjjilbang, and in the larger cities, each neighborhood will have their local (more simple) houses, with enormous super-houses featuring more ameneties like manicures, “Zen” rooms, special tea houses, and the like. Many smaller towns will feature specialized jjimjjilbang. Some, as in Jeollanamdo (a region famous for some of the worlds finest green tea), will have green tea baths or soaps, while others, famous for sulfur springs or beneficial mud (i.e. Daecheon, a small coastal town famed for its mud), will feature these specialized baths.
The experience works something like this. Start with a wash in hot water, scrubbing thoroughly, then sit in a hot (ranging from 35-45 C degree) pool for 10-15 minutes. Move to the cold (about 12 C) water shower and plunge. Repeat as necessary, adding in massage, full body scrub by an Korean grandfather (a bit strange the first time, but the Grandfather scrubs with a vengeance, and your skin will never feel cleaner or softer), sweat in a wet and/or dry sauna, or dip in an herbal tea/sea salt/mineral water bath as you like. Take one last plunge in the cold bath, and finish a shower, (self) scrub down, and nap in a dry, warm room.
Koreans do it at least weekly, and I can see why. It’s absolute magic after a night drinking the Korean firewater (soju), or on a Sunday afternoon to start the week off right. Your body feels totally relaxed and your skin will feel like silk. All for about $15.
Even at home, I’m a firm believer in ending a wash with a progressively colder stream. Also useful if you live in a tropical climate and have little-to-no Air Con to lower your core temperature.
“Wow, I just tried this and I have to say that I almost passed out. It was like my blood stopped and did a 180 degree turn. I feel strangely good though.” (Michael January 22, 2010)
“I did a silent scream cuz i couldnt even make a noise at that point
“but i felt so good afterward!” (saeed January 24, 2010)
Yeah, like that. Maybe it’s a case of “It feels so good when it stops!”?
On the assumption that the weather will indeed be cold again some day (whoever started the whole idea of Chicago’s summers being short obviously felt differently about summer than I do), it will be interesting to see if this helps ease the transition from warm house to cold yard. Assuming that the family hasn’t found me stiff and blue in the shower stall and planted me by then.
Nikolai Shevchuk is basically a charlatan. The study you cite was done by him, and it flies in the face of basic science. While the locus caeruleus is being studied in relation to such things as depression and panic disorder, there’s absolutely no physiologic reason to believe cold water on the skin has any particular effect upon it, or that it ever could.
>>>
you don’t know what you are talking about. there is a world of literature showing that lowering the skin temperature increases wakefulness and activates the sympathetic nervous system and the locus ceruleus.
J.S. Baffi and M. Palkovits, Fine topography of brain areas activated by cold stress. A fos immunohistochemical study in rats, Neuroendocrinology 72 (2000), pp. 102-113.
A. Beley, P. Beley, L. Rochette and J. Bralet, Time-dependent changes in the rate of noradrenaline synthesis in various rat brain areas during cold exposure, Pflugers Arch 368 (1977), pp. 225-229.
L. Yuan, C. Brewer and D. Pfaff, Immediate-early Fos protein levels in brainstem neurons of male and female gonadectomized mice subjected to cold exposure, Stress 5 (2002), pp. 285-294.
A.P. Mahapatra, H.N. Mallick and V.M. Kumar, Changes in sleep on chronic exposure to warm and cold ambient temperatures, Physiol Behav 84 (2005), pp. 287-294.
G.G. Giesbrecht, J.L. Arnett, E. Vela and G.K. Bristow, Effect of task complexity on mental performance during immersion hypothermia, Aviat Space Environ Med 64 (1993), pp. 206-211.
G. Flensner and C. Lindencrona, The cooling-suit: case studies of its influence on fatigue among eight individuals with multiple sclerosis, J Adv Nurs 37 (2002), pp. 541-550.
R. Fronczek, R.J. Raymann, N. Romeijn, S. Overeem, M. Fischer, J.G. van Dijk, et al., Manipulation of core body and skin temperature improves vigilance and maintenance of wakefulness in narcolepsy, Sleep 31 (2008), pp. 233-240.
I could go on about your other baseless claims, but it is pretty clear that you know nothing on this subject because you are not citing any sources.
So, I couldn’t help but laugh at coming across this article! People voluntarily taking cold water torture showers! “Health benefits”?!?! Pffft! Sure, it’s was invigorating when I first took them lol, but the novelty wares off pretty quickly when you realise your toes are about 90 secs away from frostbite!
Oh, and I’m a woman – does this now make me an honorary ‘manliness man’? ;)
My method is to start with a warm /hot shower , soap , gel , shampoo etc and then slowly turn the hot water off , I spend a few minutes under a very cold shower.
I feel so fantastic ,my body shines , hard rubbing with a rough towel, man you can’t beat it.
Oh I haven’t had flu or a cold for a year
cheers